Less is more with performance of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

The eminent British director Peter Brook gave a series of lectures in the 1960s that were eventually compiled into a book called “The Empty Space.” At the heart of the book was the idea that any space can be a stage.

I’m not sure that I completely grasped Brook’s meaning until I saw director Eric Ting’s production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the Playhouse in the Park Thursday evening.

When you walk into the vast openness of the Marx Theatre and glance down at the stage, the only thing there is a “ghost light,” the single, bare bulb theaters place on the stage when it is not in use.

When the play starts, the light is removed. But little else changes. Laura Jellinek’s set has none of those iconic elements that filled the screen in Robert Mulligan’s 1962 movie of Harper Lee’s novel. There is no craggy tree outside Boo Radley’s house. Just the word “tree” scrawled in white chalk on a rolling metal door. No gracious courtroom. Instead, there are just a few chairs and a witness box, revolving slowly on one of the stage’s two huge turntables. There are a few stairs. And a couple of doors. Everything is painted black.

Rather than revisit the images that are already etched into most of our minds, Ting and Jellinek help us focus on Christopher Sergel’s wise and respectful adaptation of Lee’s words.

It’s enough. More than enough, really. “To Kill a Mockingbird” – the novel – was a masterful piece of storytelling. So that’s what Ting and company do – just tell the story. Ting’s staging is methodical and ever-so-logical. As with the set, there is nothing showy about it.

The same with his many collaborators – Jellinek, designers Toni-Leslie James (costumes), Mark Barton (lighting) and John Gromada (sound). They do all they can to be invisible and facilitate the telling of this stirring tale.

The result is a memorable and inspiring evening of theater.

What is especially rewarding about this production is that it’s hard to find a weak link in the cast. All of us, no matter how experienced we are at watching theater, have a sense of a cast’s strengths. And of its weaknesses. Not here. Every actor on the stage, right down to the spectators in the courtroom, is credible. Even after years of seeing this show on screens or in books, it’s hard now to imagine that these characters could possibly look different than the ones who are on the Playhouse’s stage.

There is Dale Hodges, who plays Jean Louise Finch – Scout – as an old woman reflecting on the events of her childhood. And Brooke Chamberlin as the youthful Scout. There are probably more than 60 years separating these two actors. Yet they are wonderfully and seamlessly connected to one another. They are equals in every way.

Then there’s John Feltch as Atticus, the moral anchor to this often heartbreaking story. We meet him at a moment when he is thrown into what is likely to become the defining moment of his career. And of his life. But Feltch doesn’t try to portray him as a heroic man. Just a good and honest man.

But then, that is one of the central points of Lee’s book. Living a life of integrity is not defined by isolated moments. It’s about trying to do the right thing every moment of every day.

It’s impossible to give each of these actors the praise they are due. Among them are Torie Wiggins, Jared Joplin, Judith Lightfoot Clarke, R. Ward Duffy, Barry Mulholland, Annie Fitzpatrick, Kenneth Early, Magan Wiles, Zoaunne LeRoy, Aidan McCracken, Kevin Cristaldi, Randy Lee Bailey, Gabriel Lawrence, Ty Joseph Shelton, Seth Wallen and Renika Williams.

Worth noting is that nearly a dozen of this fine cast are actors in Greater Cincinnati’s burgeoning community of fine professional actors.

It’s so easy to be seduced by the whirlwind that constitutes life in modern America; by the 24-hour news cycle where so much is said about so little, by a presidential campaign that ranges from savage to embarrassing and by a world where our electronic devices assault us with an unending barrage of “important” information from email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so much else.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” gives us a haven where we can step away from all of that for a brief moment and reflect on the importance of integrity and moral courage and to remind ourselves how very essential things like fairness and duty and conscience are in our lives.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” runs at the Playhouse in the Park through April 10.

Email davidlyman@gmail.com.